Wednesday, April 28, 2010

So, my first graduate seminar concluded yesterday with the sharing of papers and the passing of pitchers. Before we moved from the classroom to the barroom, I shared these final thoughts:

I want to conclude the semester by suggesting another way of reading and engaging texts—one I feel is an alternative to common, critical engagements with texts that operate in the negative register (e.g., what does this text leave out, overlook, or otherwise exclude, simplify, or gloss?). This is not to say that such readings are unproductive or unnecessary (as such readings are often both productive and necessary).

It is to suggest other ways of reading that mine each and every text for something that can be “taken away,” “augmented,” “adopted,” or “utilized.” It is a way of reading that leaves one open to persuasion—to approach a text perfectly willing to be “converted to the enemy's camp.” And it is a way of reading that generates new questions, new ideas, and new ways of thinking.

Here are some sample texts from this semester that suggest and enact such approaches:

Muckelbauer’s “reading productively” or “affirmatively”

Gorgias' rescuing of Helen

Jarratt’s re-reading of the sophists

Rickert’s use of Plato’s chôra

Burke’s notion of “discounting”

Corder’s invocation of “love”

This technique of assent is also a reminder that readings in the negative register (where a text is “problematized”) are likewise always already acts of assent: every no bellies a previous yes. From where do we say “no,” and by what "yes" are we enabled to do so? Opening or starting with the "yes" may very well highlight the assumptions upon which our critical responses are based (or cultivated).

I likewise find this technique of assent—as a pattern of response or habit—very helpful for my work as a teacher (and all scholars are, I hope, teachers). And not just because teachers should be generous or “nice” (which they should be), but because one of the joys of teaching is learning. How does the thinking of students and their work productively change my own thinking or teaching practices? What can I, in other words, take away from each and every class and student?

Finally, another excellent reason for affirmative readings or this technique of assent is this: you will come to publish scholarly works many of you. And these works will enter into a community of scholars. Articles written in the safety of solitude will go out into the world and be read by others. What are your obligations to other scholars and their work? How do you want to position yourself within a community of scholars? How do you want to respond to and assent to the work of others?

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Easter Break and trip back to S. Indiana (which entails intermittent internet access) has prevented me from blogging for a bit. I am going to sneak a short one here to get back into the swing of things.This from a Los Angeles Timesstory on the agency, named in my title, that is

responsible for deciding the names of natural features, including glaciers, mountains, valleys, rivers and ponds.

Now, I obviously love this sort of thing because it draws attention to the inherently political/rhetorical act of naming: no naming is value-free or "innocent." Additionally, the presence of a board to adjudicate such matters (the board does not propose names; it only acts on suggestions from citizens) reminds us that because naming is value-ladenit is necessarily contested. Names matter and so we fight about them (or, better yet, we all know they are important because we fight about them, which is to say that if they were indeed value-free and innocent we wouldn't care one way or the other: the proof of my argument is in the argumentative pudding).

Soon the naming authority will find its own name in the spotlight.

In an upcoming decision, the panel will take up a controversial request by a Bay Area man who filed a request to change Mount Diablo in to Mount Reagan because he finds the name, Spanish for "the devil," to be offensive. His request touched off a flood of Internet opposition, and the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors voted against the idea and sent an opposition letter to the federal panel.

Given that the board has recently approved the name "Devils Anvil Peak," it seems unlikely that they will likewise find "Mount Diable" offensive. Now, of course there will be cries of "politicization of the naming process" and howls of "why does everything have to be so political?" I have suggested it is inherently political, and I would suggest that such instances serve as uncomfortable reminders of this. And I would conclude this short blog by suggesting that complaints of "politicization" come not just from those who disparage politics but from those who lose naming contests.

about _monster

Pure_Sophist_Monster is Nathaniel Rivers, an Assistant Professor of English at Saint Louis University. _Monster teaches rhetorical theory and writing at the undergraduate and graduate levels. _Monster's areas of interest in include Rhetorical Theory, History of Rhetoric, Public Rhetorics, Composition, Professional and Technical Communication, Computers and Writing, Philosophy of Mind, and Neuroscience and Humanities. Please visit www.nathanielrivers.com for more information.

focus & direction

As this blog's title suggests, a majority of the posts will address issues of sophistry, a term we can roughly equate with rhetoric (although not unproblematically). Sophistry is a particular kind of rhetoric and most understandings of it are pejorative. The historian of rhetoric Susan Jarrett says that the sophists have historically been seen as "arch-deceptors, enemies of Truth, manipulators of language" (xi Rereading the Sophists). Viewed less pejoratively (and more productively), however, we can say that the sophists were committed to an understanding of truth and values as (culturally and situationally) contingent, and that they were invested in language as means of navigating these contingencies. For many of the sophists (a group that is hard to define through time), the human experience is defined by flux and the possibilities for transformation.

This thoroughly sophistic blogs hopes to address particular contingencies (political, historical, bodily, and environmental) and to do so genuinely and generously.

why the crow?

The image of a crow adorns this blog because of its association with a founder of ancient Greek rhetoric, Corax of Syracuse, whose name means "crow."